Friday, May 10, 2013

Can HIIT With Weights Produce Maximum Muscle In Less Time?

By Howe Russ


Naturally, if you walked up to anybody at your local gym and asked them if they would like to learn how to get a six pack in 3 minutes they would probably jump at the chance. Of course, everybody believes such things to be nonsense. However, if you're looking into how to build muscle you are about to discover why HIIT can produce very good results in less than half the time of regular resistance training.

Thanks to the discovery of HIIT, the days where people used to spend over 2 hours per day in the gym should be long gone. However, many are still stuck in that mentality. If that's you, then you are about to open a door to a whole new world of training. []

The levels of variety and intensity are the two most important factors within any solid training program. Variety simply means challenging the body in ways it's not used to. You could simply swap low reps for high reps, or perform exercises in a different order than usual.

At one point on another, almost every gym user has encountered a period of little progress. In most cases, this occurs because their body has simply adapted to the routine the person has been doing. If you have been training the same way and lifting the same level of resistance for the last three months, it's no wonder your muscles have adapted. They know they don't need to grow any more in order to handle the workload being put on them, because they did it all last week and the week before that.

You don't need to completely overhaul a program which may have worked well for you in the past. Simply throw in a few curve balls, try to keep every workout slightly different. Keep the body guessing and you'll keep it improving.

A lot of people misunderstand the meaning of the word intensity. They often presume it means working out really quickly, sacrificing form and technique for speed. This is not the case. Intensity means keeping your heart rate elevated. There are numerous fat loss benefits to doing this, as well as other benefits too. Your actual exercise is still performed slowly and controlled throughout, getting the absolute most out of each contraction you do. Intensity comes into play when you drop the weights at the end of each set. Rather than sitting there talking to other gym users while you wait for your next set to begin, watch the clock. After just thirty seconds, begin the next set.

The shock factor of hitting the body with new, unfamiliar exercises and also keeping rest times down is enough to spur new growth in even the hardest of gainers.

The following sample workout focuses on toning the midsection in as little time as possible. It is simple, but it is very intense: []

* Sit Up

* Bicycle Crunch

* Plank

Each exercise should be done for 30 seconds, with no rest between exercises. When you reach the end of the circuit simply rest for a minute and then go again. Three rounds would take less than 10 minutes. That may seem like nothing at all, given the hours people often spend doing crunches and leg raises in the gym, but the high intensity levels here are something most people cannot cope with.

The workout above will effectively show you how to get a six pack in 3 minutes at home every day. If you were to keep doing it, however, you would simply adapt as we have already discussed. The trick lies in varying things when it become stale. You can also apply this style of training to any other muscle group, so if your goal is to learn how to build muscle in as little time as possible, then you have just discovered one of the most effective methods.




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